Spotlight: Megan Exnicios

Megan Exnicios graduated with a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a minor in Marine Biology from Tulane University.

Megan joined the Rosenthal Lab in the fall of 2016. She is broadly interested in animal behavior and the role behavior plays in mate choice. Finding a mate involves making decisions that can affect the fitness of the mating individual and the resulting offspring, and many factors come into play. She aims to look at one particular factor, the role that individual personality plays in making these decisions and the consequences. Do bold individuals tend to choose mates that are also bold, or do they prefer timid mates? She will be using two species of live-bearing freshwater fish – Xiphophorusmalinche and X. birchmanni – and their hybrids to explore the effects of personality in mating preference.